The Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF concluded its two-year project 'Our Cow Angus,' in which the fate of a live cow was determined by token holders. Purchasers of tokens representing future hamburgers and leather had the option to return them via a 'remorse portal'; when over 50% were returned by the March 13 deadline, the cow was sent to a sanctuary instead of a slaughterhouse.
The French mega-gallery Perrotin has added sculptor Alma Allen to its roster. Allen previously caused controversy by accepting a nomination to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale under the Trump administration's State Department, a decision that led his former galleries to drop him. The article also notes other industry news, including Keisha Scarville winning the Brooklyn Museum's UOVO Prize and Marina Abramović creating an inflatable installation for New York's Balloon Museum.
Smiljan Radic Wins the Pritzker Prize, ‘Men Retire But Women Get Fired From Museum Leadership’ Says Anne Pasternak: Morning Links for March 13, 2026
Chilean architect Smiljan Radic has won the 2026 Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest honor. The award, which had been delayed due to the Pritzker family's past associations with Jeffrey Epstein, recognizes Radic's lyrical and experimental designs that embrace fragility and dialogue with natural environments, creating what the jury described as "optimistic and quietly joyful shelter."
A small non-commercial gallery in Brooklyn, Subtitled NYC, is hosting an exhibition by artists Pap Souleye Fall and Char Jeré that intentionally embraces "friction"—the slow, bumpy, and human experience—as a rejection of optimization culture in the art world. In other news, the Pentagon has reportedly banned press photographers after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth complained about unflattering images, and over 200 artists, including Brian Eno, have petitioned the British Museum to stop altering texts related to Palestine.
The Barclays Center arena in Brooklyn has launched a multi-year public art initiative called 'Brooklyn Art Encounters.' The program includes a new artist-in-residence component, with Paul Pfeiffer as the inaugural resident, and will feature digital art broadcasts, major new commissions by artists like Sarah Sze, Rashid Johnson, Mark Bradford, and Kambui Olujimi, and a series of public installations on the arena's plaza and in its entrances.
Iranian artist Kamrooz Aram is currently experiencing a significant institutional and commercial moment, with his work appearing in three major exhibitions across two continents simultaneously. Critic Aruna D’Souza highlights Aram’s ability to synthesize Islamic visual idioms with Western abstraction, creating a painterly language that transcends cultural hierarchies and treats historical narratives with a unique lightness.
The exhibition “Our Friend, Jean” returns to Brooklyn this May at The Bishop Gallery, coinciding with Frieze Week. The show features twenty artworks alongside personal ephemera and photographs from Jean-Michel Basquiat’s formative years between 1979 and 1980, primarily sourced from the collection of his former roommate Alexis Adler. This iteration includes previously unseen items from Adler’s trove, such as hand-painted garments and postcards, and will be activated by panels featuring Basquiat’s early collaborators.
The Brooklyn Museum is deaccessioning approximately 200 objects from its collection, including American furniture, artworks, and textiles, through a sale hosted by Brunk Auctions on April 9. Highlights include a rare circa 1690 walnut dressing table, estimated at $80,000–$120,000, and a late 17th-century oak cupboard. The museum states the sale is part of an ongoing effort to convert storage spaces into galleries and that proceeds will fund collection care and new acquisitions.
Radiohead has announced a North American tour for "Motion Picture House," a massive 17,000-square-foot immersive audiovisual installation. The project features a 75-minute film titled Kid A Mnesia, directed by Sean Evans, which incorporates art created by frontman Thom Yorke and longtime collaborator Stanley Donwood. Launching at the Coachella festival before traveling to cities like Brooklyn and Mexico City, the experience combines surround-sound studio recordings with physical galleries displaying the original source art from the band's seminal turn-of-the-century albums.
Hyperallergic compiled a list of notable April Fools' Day pranks executed by major arts and cultural institutions in 2025. The jokes included the Morgan Library and Museum pretending to give its ornate interior a cheap "Landlord Special" makeover, the New York Public Library announcing it would replace its iconic lion statues with beaver sculptures, and the Brooklyn Museum and Brooklyn Botanic Garden proposing a whimsical, amusement park-style tunnel connecting their campuses.
Artist Lorna Simpson has significantly reduced the asking price for her Brooklyn home and studio, located at 208 Vanderbilt Avenue in Fort Greene. Originally listed for $6.5 million in August 2025, the 3,300-square-foot townhouse is now priced at $5 million following months on the market. The property, which features a double-height great room and floor-to-ceiling windows, was custom-built in 2006 for Simpson and her then-husband, artist James Casebere.
Performance artist Crackhead Barney, known for her viral street interventions and ambush interviews at protests and public events, is transitioning her work to the formal stage. Her new play, GOD IS RAPING ME, is having sold-out dates at the Pageant performance space in Brooklyn, marking a significant shift from her guerrilla-style, social media-driven practice to theatrical production.
The Trisha Brown Dance Company is reviving Robert Rauschenberg's first choreographed dance, 'Pelican,' for the first time in 60 years. The single-night performance will take place at the vintage Xanadu roller rink in Brooklyn as part of a 'Pelican Gala,' which also features two long-unseen dances by Trisha Brown. The event coincides with the centennial of Rauschenberg's birth.
A New Brooklyn Art Fair With a Global Outlook Debuts This Spring
A new art fair called Conductor: Art Fair of the Global Majority will hold its inaugural edition in Brooklyn from April 30 to May 3, 2026. Organized by Powerhouse Arts, it will feature 27 galleries and 17 special projects, bringing together artists and galleries from Africa, Latin America, Asia, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Oceania, and Indigenous nations.
Major U.S. museums are launching a series of high-profile exhibitions this spring, headlined by a massive Marcel Duchamp retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Other key highlights include the North American debut of Iris van Herpen’s technologically-driven fashion at the Brooklyn Museum and a focused look at Peter Hujar’s photography of the New York underground at the Morgan Library & Museum.
A hand-signed original exhibition poster by the late conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner, titled "A Means to an End" (2006), has been made available for purchase through ArtWise in Brooklyn. Created for Weiner’s solo exhibition at Le Musée de Sérignan, the color offset lithograph features the artist's signature in black pen and exemplifies his career-long investigation into language as a sculptural medium. The work is priced at $700 and includes a certificate of authenticity from the gallery.
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has announced its 101st class of Guggenheim Fellows, awarding grants to 223 individuals across 55 disciplines. Among the 30 fine artists selected for the 2026 cohort are Brooklyn-based conceptual artist American Artist, textile artist and educator Sonya Clark, and interdisciplinary artist Allison Janae Hamilton. Each fellow receives a financial stipend designed to provide the creative and intellectual freedom necessary to pursue their work without restrictive conditions.
The long-running television series Law & Order has adapted the recent high-profile Louvre Museum jewel heist into a new episode titled "Beyond Measure." Filmed at the Brooklyn Museum—serving as the fictional Atlas Museum of Art—the plot follows detectives investigating the theft of the bejeweled Crown of Popoyan, a fictionalized version of the real-world $102 million heist involving a cherry picker escape. The episode weaves in a complex subplot regarding the repatriation of Indigenous Colombian artifacts held by the Vatican.
The Brooklyn Museum has named photographer and multimedia artist Keisha Scarville the winner of its sixth annual UOVO Prize. She will receive a $25,000 unrestricted grant, a public exhibition titled "Where Salt Meets Black Water" at the museum's Iris Cantor Plaza opening May 8, and a commission for a large-scale work on the façade of UOVO's Bushwick storage facility.
A new memoir by Fred Brathwaite, known as Fab 5 Freddy, chronicles his life as a pivotal figure connecting the emerging hip-hop and graffiti scenes of 1970s and 80s Brooklyn with the downtown Manhattan art world. The book, "Everybody's Fly: A Life of Art, Music, and Changing the Culture," serves as an all-access pass to a transformative era, featuring encounters with icons like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, and Debbie Harry.
The Tiny Brooklyn Project Space Resisting the Gallery Machine
Subtitled NYC, a small non-commercial project space in Brooklyn's Greenpoint, is hosting the exhibition 'On Other Terms' by artists Pap Souleye Fall and Char Jeré. The immersive, multi-sensory installation, filled with intricate assemblages, analog objects, and digital elements, creates an overwhelming environment that mimics the friction and complexity of urban life.
The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) is hosting the West Coast debut of "Giants," a major exhibition featuring the personal art collection of musical icons Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz (Kasseem Dean). The show features works by nearly 40 Black American and diasporic artists, including monumental pieces by towering figures in the contemporary art world. To localize the presentation, the museum has collaborated with the Deans to launch a companion exhibition titled "Hometown Heroes," which spotlights San Diego-based artists.
The Brooklyn Museum has announced a $13 million renovation project to create new Arts of Africa galleries, set to open in Fall 2027. The 6,400-square-foot space on the museum's third floor will display 300 works from its 4,500-piece collection, spanning from antiquity to the present day. The project, led by architectural firm Peterson Rich Office, will repurpose latent storage space and reconnect galleries architecturally.
The Brooklyn Public Library hosted an overnight festival called "Night in the Library: The Philosophy of Mathematics" on Pi Day, March 14. The event featured a diverse program including tap dancing, textile workshops, talks by novelist Michael Cunningham and artist Molly Crabapple, and concerts, all aimed at exploring math's connections to broader culture. Filmmaker Werner Herzog delivered the keynote address, titled "Mathematics and the Sublime," in which he argued that mathematics is a new form of art, loaded with meaning and poetry.
The New York-based Asian-American art and fashion collective CFGNY has opened a new exhibition, "Puddles into Pond," at the non-profit art space Amant in Brooklyn. The show features an immersive installation with a shaggy fur bridge, kinetic sculptures, and ceramic works, running until August 16. This exhibition is part of a significant season for the collective, which also includes a debut installation at the Whitney Biennial and participation in a group show at Pioneer Works.
Liz Munsell has been appointed Vice President of Curatorial Arts and Programs at Brooklyn's Powerhouse Arts, a creative nonprofit in Gowanus. She will develop public programming, exhibitions, and community engagement, while overseeing artist residencies and art fairs, including the upcoming Brooklyn Fine Art Print Fair. She succeeds Diya Vij, who left to become New York City's cultural affairs commissioner.
The Brooklyn Fine Art Print Fair (BFAPF) has returned for its second edition at Powerhouse Arts, expanding significantly from its inaugural "beta test" last year. The fair now features over 60 exhibitors, including a diverse mix of independent print shops, academic departments, self-represented artists, and established international galleries. This year's iteration emphasizes experimental mixed-media practices and a rigorous juried selection process, moving beyond traditional printmaking to include illuminated plexiglass screenprints and sculptural paper works.
Trans Art Fest has launched as a major citywide celebration in New York City, featuring over 120 transgender artists across more than a dozen exhibitions and 20 public events. Running through late May, the festival includes gallery shows at venues like Eleventh Hour Art and Puffin Brooklyn, alongside outdoor installations, glassblowing workshops, and community-driven projects. Founded by textile artist and curator Carter Shocket, the initiative seeks to move beyond fleeting visibility by establishing a sustained, multi-week presence across Brooklyn and beyond.
Brooklyn-based painter Kelly Ahern is set to debut a one-night solo exhibition titled 'Surface Tension' at the Bushwick Gallery on April 14, 2026. The show is part of the gallery’s 'Solo Statement' program, specifically the series 'Doesn't Play Well with Others,' which grants artists total creative autonomy to curate and present their work. The exhibition will feature Ahern's latest abstract compositions and conceptual pieces, focusing on her unique approach to the medium of painting.
Gallery Chang is hosting a solo exhibition titled "A Bold Attention" by South Korean artist Suh Yongsun at its New York location from April 9 to May 2, 2026. The exhibition features fifteen works, including self-portraits, historical scenes such as those involving King Danjong, and contemporary urban observations of New York locations like Rockefeller Center and Brooklyn.